The title of this new editorial from the Los Angeles Times, “Was adopting Common Core a mistake,” makes it clear that things like a $1 billion additional education price tag just for California plus the uncertainty of quality in the new Common Core State Standards have even this liberal newspaper’s editors worried.
Kentucky has also bitten into Common Core. Should we be worried, too???
The Boston Globe just ran an interesting Op-Ed from Tom Birmingham, the former head of the Massachusetts Senate.
Birmingham discusses the new Common Core State Standards, which have replaced Massachusetts’ former very excellent public school education standards:
“I also fear that universal high standards and objective assessments are being jettisoned in favor of a return to vague expectations and fuzzy standards.”
Birmingham notes some remarkable gains after Massachusetts enacted its former education program, which included the best standards in the nation.
1) Eventually, over 90 percent of Massachusetts students would pass the state’s old MCAS assessments,
2) The Commonwealth’s SAT scores would rise for 13 consecutive years,
3) Massachusetts’ students would become the first in every category in every grade on national testing known as “the Nation’s Report Card,” and
4) Massachusetts would rank at or near the top in international science tests.
Now, a watered down Common Core based education system is putting all of that performance at risk. Why?
And, why didn’t Kentucky go for what already worked, spectacularly, in Massachusetts?
Why didn’t other states?
What is really going on here?
Tonight, John Garen, Ph.D., professor of economics at the University of Kentucky and the chair of the Bluegrass Institute’s board of scholars will appear on KET’s Kentucky Tonight with Bill Goodman.
Garen will be discussing the very important issue of the price of poverty in Kentucky. Previously, board of scholar member Eric Schansberg appeared on the program to discuss that very issue. You can watch that episode here.
What: Bluegrass Institute Board of Scholars to discuss the price of poverty in Kentucky.
Who: John Garen, Ph.D., chair of the Bluegrass Institute’s Board of Schoalrs
Where: KET
When: Monday, June 17th at 8 PM EST
Tune in to learn more!
This letter was published in the Lexington Herald-Leader on June 15, 2013.
Sovereign pride
Kentuckians are proud to live in a commonwealth rich in tradition and resources. However, I find it disconcerting that while we take pride in basketball, horses and bourbon, we often fail to take pride in state sovereignty.
When it comes to Kentuckians governing themselves, why do we seem content to sit on the sidelines and take orders from unelected bureaucrats spewing unilateral regulations from hundreds of miles away?
Why, for instance, do Kentuckians allow federal Environmental Protect Agency officials to dictate terms and conditions for how Kentucky utilizes coal, our state’s primary natural gift?
The EPA employs two primary tactics to hinder producers from providing jobs and low-cost energy.
First, it has stalled the permitting process for mine openings and expansions, causing uncertainty among investors, owners and miners. Second, the agency now requires expensive retrofits for coal-fired power plants that don’t even come close to offering sufficient economic benefits compared to the costs incurred.
Given the fact that Kentucky is a poor state in a struggling global economy, why are Washington bureaucrats allowed to strangle an industry that provides 93 percent of the commonwealth’s electricity and attracts energy-intensive industries — and the multitude of jobs they create — to the Bluegrass state?
The virtues and pitfalls of coal will always be debated. But one thing is certain: decisions about Kentucky’s resources should be made by those most affected — Kentuckians.
Logan Morford
Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions
Lexington
Today the Bluegrass Institute participated in an event hosted by the Christian Home Educators of Kentucky (CHEK) to raise awareness of the potential threats to Kentucky’s educational sovereignty created by the state’s adoption of Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
These standards are a one-sized-fits-every-state educational curriculum to which the commonwealth acquiesced before the standards were even finalized. Not only is it concerning that the feds coerced states like Kentucky – prone to accepting every federal carrot dangled in front of their noses – into accepting the standards, the efficacy of this curriculum is also under dispute as at least five of the 29 members of the CCSS validation committee refused to sign on in support.
What: Christian Home Educators of Kentucky Conference, a lecture on the perils of the Common Core State Standards
Who: Dick Innes, Educational Analyst for the Bluegrass Institute
When: Saturday, June 14 at 11 AM
Where: Valley View Church, Conference Room A. 8911 Third Street Rd. Louisville, KY. 40272
So come on out and learn about this important issue.
Last week, Gov. Beshear made a rare move (at least for him) in opposition of the current administration. In a letter sent to EPA administrator Bob Perciaspe, Beshear chastised the EPA’s efforts to virtually ensure the demise of Kentucky’s energy sector:
“Our ability to continue growing our economy depends on affordable, reliable power—and this can only be guaranteed if our nation truly has a diversified portfolio that includes coal. Asking some states to dramatically alter their potential sources of fuel for generating electricity puts their citizens at a distinct economic disadvantage. However, by allowing the electric sector to employ advanced technologies, combined with state and federal research and development efforts targeted toward newer, cleaner coal-fired power generation, the nation as a whole wins.”
Beshear’s complaint was in response to the EPA’s new greenhouse gas regulations – regulations which were supposed to be finalized in April but have been delayed due to many understandably disgruntled coal industry and state officials. Such a climate of regulatory uncertainty isn’t just bad for those in coal country; it’s bad for Kentuckians all across the commonwealth who rely on coal for 93% of their electricity; it’s bad for energy-intensive businesses that rely on Kentucky’s cheap energy rates to stay profitable; and it’s bad for the thousands of jobs created as a result of these business’ investment dollars.
But, as blog title suggests, greenhouse gas regulations aren’t the only way the EPA is putting the boots to coal country. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that since 2009, the EPA’s has refused to defend itself in lawsuits brought against it no less than 60 times.
So what explains such strange bureaucratic masochism? The answer is called “sue and settle,” the process by which environmental groups sue the EPA for failing to meet this or that environmental regulation, but not before the two parties come up with a preconceived plan to settle. The settlement “forces” the EPA to adopt new regulatory standards and allows them to come down hard on politically unpopular industries. This process – taking place completely outside the jurisdiction of our elected officials – is directly responsible for the EPA enacting more than 100 additional barriers to doing business in Kentucky.
Lucky us.
What will those devious bureaucrats at the EPA think of next in an attempt to snuff out Kentucky’s energy sector?
Tea-party activists led by Jessamine County’s David Adams recently filed lawsuits in Franklin Circuit Court challenging Gov. Steve Beshear’s arrogant use of executive power to force Kentuckians to participate in the federal health-care boondoggle known as “Obamacare.”
Beshear claims he has the right to create a government-run health exchange and expand Kentucky’s Medicaid rolls – Obamacare’s state mandates – without agreement by lawmakers.
Adams and his band of freedom-loving litigators have an important message concerning Beshear’s disregard for the constitutional role of the legislature: “just because some politician says it doesn’t make it so.”
In his lawsuit challenging Beshear’s power to expand Medicaid in the commonwealth, Adams is combatting a state statute used by the governor to justify his domineering dictum.
Beshear claims that state statute KRS 205.520(3) allows him to force just about any kind of federal program related to health care on Kentuckians and gives him the authority to appropriate tax dollars without limit – and without legislative approval.
The statute appears to do just that, explicitly stating that “it is the policy of the Commonwealth to take advantage of all federal funds that may be available for medical assistance. To qualify for federal funds the secretary for health and family services may by regulation comply with any requirement that may be imposed or opportunity that may be presented by federal law.”
Adams rightly calls the law “brain dead.”
Considering it passed during the 1960s push for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program, the extent to which this statute goes to bypass a debate on such open-ended spending is not surprising.
Neither should it surprise us that left-wing fervor in the country during those times would grant an unelected executive-branch bureaucrat enormous power not only to profligately spend taxpayer dollars without any input by the people’s representatives, but also force Kentuckians to bow low and kiss the toe of whatever mandate the federal government kicks our way – as long as there are plenty of federally printed dollars hanging off that foot.
Adams says his goal in suing the governor is to “stop the creation of the state-run health exchange and cancel the Medicaid expansion.”
But that work ultimately belongs to legislators, not judges. And lawmakers in several states have already risen to the challenge. Florida, for example, is creating a private-insurance marketplace that provides better coverage and care for patients than the broken Medicaid system ever did.
Plus, responsible Sunshine State policymakers decided that picking up the $237 million annual price tag to cover 115,000 families that either don’t have insurance through their employers or don’t qualify for Medicaid was more financially responsible than spending the $51 billion that would come from Washington during the next decade to spend on a failed government-run program.
Beshear offers no plan for how Kentucky will pay the extra costs of adding more than 300,000 enrollees to Medicaid after the federal government quits picking up the full tab in three years.
He also shows little interest in the constitutional legitimacy of his executive orders.
Whatever Kentucky lawmakers think about Obamacare, they don’t want to be left out of a process that involves spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Rather than filing so many meaningless bills and resolutions – as lawmakers bent on avoiding controversy but still wanting to appear productive to their constituents often do – the first bill filed during the 2014 session should be to undo the unconstitutional statute Beshear uses to justify his unilateral actions.
Not needing any undoing is the Kentucky Constitution, which already prohibits such power grabs.
On the books since 1891, Section Two states: “Absolute and arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic.”
Jim Waters is president of the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. Reach him at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com. Read previously published columns at www.freedomkentucky.org/bluegrassbeacon.
Did you know that each individual in the commonwealth is on the line for over $3,300 as a result of Kentucky’s indebtedness?
According to a recent release from the Tax Foundation, Kentucky’s state debt per capita blows neighboring Tennessee’s right out of the water, and that’s not a good thing. That’s because Tennessee is the least indebted state in the nation with each Tennessean on the line for only $925. Check out where other of Kentucky’s neighbors rank in the map below.
